Search for Serenity - 013 Learning Torah = Menucha

The Gemara (Shabbos 88a) relates how a person noticed Rava sitting and learning, and he was so immersed in his learning that he didn’t realize his fingers were bleeding. The person made fun of Rava, saying, “You are an impulsive nation. When Hashem asked you if you want the Torah, you said, “Naaseh” (“We will do”) before you said “Nishmah” (“We will hear”). Rava answered him, “It was not done out of impulsiveness, but out of love for Hashem.”

The outsider who saw Rava learning with such concentration thought Rava must lack menuchas hanefesh, but really the opposite was true. Learning the Torah comes from menuchas hanefesh. We accepted the Torah because we trusted in Hashem that the Torah is good.

Chazal (Midrash Rabbah, Beraishis 10:9) state that before the Torah was given, the world was not stable. After the Torah came into the world and we accepted it peacefully, the world became a more stable place. Chazal (Shabbos 86b) also state that the Torah was given on Shabbos, because Shabbos is the day of menuchah.

The Elements That Bring Menuchah – Earth and Water

The world is made up of four elements: fire, wind, water and earth. Which of the elements are responsible for bringing a person menuchas hanefesh? The elements of fire and wind cannot bring menuchah. Fire constantly seeks to rise. The emotion of anger, which is rooted in fire, is the antithesis of being calm. The element of wind also cannot bring menuchah, because wind moves.

The elements which bring menuchah to a person are water and earth. Water by nature is calm (unless wind comes and blows it around). Earth is even calmer, and provides a person with stable ground to stand on, unlike water which cannot hold something.

However, earth can also be an evil kind of calmness. If a person is too connected to his element of earth, he is sleepy and lethargic. A person in jail is quite stabilized, but this type of stability does not cause menuchas hanefesh.

The element of earth stabilizes only the body, not the soul. A soul that is too attached to its earth becomes sleep-like and lethargic. Water, on the other hand, has an advantage. It brings growth, by giving nutrients to the earth. Water takes the earth and lifts it up by giving it growth.

A person is made up of a body and a soul. The soul is called a nishmas chaim, a soul of life. The body was taken from the earth. Menuchas hanefesh comes from the element of water, while menuchah of the body comes from earth. When a person dies, his body is buried in the earth, where his body finds menuchah. Water gives menuchah to the soul and makes the soul grow. Earth gives the wrong kind of menuchah, which is sleepiness – a sixtieth of death.

Emunah Balances our Stability with our Growth

When we received the Torah, which elements of our soul did we use? The Torah is above a person. The Torah existed even before Creation; Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world. The menuchas hanefesh that came to the world when the Torah was given did not come from fire, water, wind or earth. It was a new kind of menuchah and it is above the four elements.

This new kind of menuchah came from our trust in Hashem, when He gave us the Torah, that we are doing the right thing. We had emunah . Emunah is found when a person relies on someone. This is a different kind of menuchas hanefesh.

If a person only draws his stability from the element of water, he is not totally stable. If a person gets stability from earth, he might have stability and menuchah, but he lacks growth. The Torah is called Toras Chaim, a living Torah. It involves growth. The Torah is a fusion of stability and growth. A person can only be totally stable when he has something to lean on, when he trusts in Hashem, when he has emunah.

Connection to the Torah

When we said Naaseh and Nishmah, we received both, the ability to grow and the ability to be stable. Before the Torah was given, the earth was not stable. After the Torah was given the earth became a stable place. Now that the Torah was given, people had something to lean on.

Not only did the Torah bring stability to the world, but it also provided the world with possibilities for endless growth. If not for the Torah, people would have been limited to this world alone. However, now that we have the Torah, a person’s growth can be connected to the Torah. Through the Torah, a person can reach the Ein Sof (Endlessness) of Hashem, Who is the source of the Torah. This is similar to the elements of earth and water combined– stability together with growth. In actuality, it is only possible through an element above the four elements – emunah.

Chazal say that, “All paths are considered dangerous.” The Kotzker Rebbe zt”l said that this applies as well to avodas Hashem. All ways in avodas Hashem can make a person grow, but they are all dangerous. The exception to this is the path of learning Torah, of which it is written, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peaceful.” The only way to really grow, that isn’t dangerous for a person, is through learning the Torah. It is the safest path to take in avodas Hashem.

We Need Menuchas Hanefesh In Order To Learn Torah

Now we can really understand why Rava didn’t notice his fingers bleeding while he was learning Torah. It wasn’t because he wasn’t paying attention. Rather, it was because he was utterly calm from learning the Torah and he wasn’t bothered that his fingers were bleeding.

We can compare this to a groom standing under his wedding canopy. Imagine if the groom under his wedding canopy gets a cut and is bleeding. Will he interupt the ceremony to go run out and get a bandage? He certainly will not. Since he is so immersed in his joy, he doesn’t care that he’s bleeding.

Rava had genuine inner peace when he learned. Even though he felt his fingers bleeding, it didn’t bother him, because he had reached menuchas hanefesh.

Stabilizing Our Growth

When the Torah was given to us, we were also given the menuchas hanefesh to learn it. If Hashem would have given it to us without menuchas hanefesh, we wouldn’t have been able to learn it. The menuchas hanefesh we received at that time is what enables us to learn the Torah. Without it, we cannot learn the Torah.

Chazal (Megillah 28b) say that in order to learn Gemara, one needs a clear mind. A person gets a clear mind through learning the Torah. Had the Torah been given during the six days of the week, we wouldn’t have this clarity when we learn it. However, since it was given on Shabbos, the day of menuchah, it gives us a clear mind when we learn it.

Only Torah Can Stabilize Us

All of us go through shaky times in our life. In order to survive these times, we need something to hold on to and keep us stable.

When a child is playing and he gets hit by another child, he runs to his father or mother for a hug. When a person gets shaken up, he runs to his source of menuchah. A child identifies his source of menuchah as his parents, so he runs to it for stability when he’s shaken up.

As a person matures, he finds menuchah in his thoughts and feelings. He no longer runs to his parents, who provided him with protecting his physical well-being. Now, he needs more emotional fortification, which his parents do not provide him with.

If a person goes through a relatively easy difficulty, he can calm himself down. What should a person do when he goes through a very stressful time? Where can a person run?

There is no way for a person to deny his need for menuchah. Hashem created the world with six days and then a seventh day for rest. Creation is designed in a way that we need menuchah in order to carry on. Just like we need menuchah in certain times of our life, so too, we need menuchah in our souls. Where can we find a source of menuchah for our souls?

Some people hold onto their community for emotional support and in this way they have stability when they need it. Although this provides a person with stability, it holds back a person’s growth. If a person ties himself down to his community for stability, he stunts his personal growth.

What is the way for a person to be stable, yet at the same time be able to grow limitlessly? In the physical world we know of, there is no such place.

Decide To Be Connected To The Torah

However, there is one power which Hashem created that is constant and forever: the Torah. The Torah existed for two thousand years before Creation, and it is eternal. The true stability that a person can have is only through connecting to the Torah. This is not a bland kind of stability, but a stability that can give a person unlimited growth.

Usually we find something that grows may lack stability; for example, a tree grows high, only to become bent over. However, Koheles says about a person (7:29), “G-d made man upright.” Hashem makes a person upright through the Torah.

The Torah, in its purity, provides a person with both stability and growth. We see what gives a person the ability to withstand the stormy difficulties of life, solely a true, inner connection to the Torah. This is only if a person derives his vitality in life from the Torah and is connected to it.

In Tehillim (131:2), Dovid HaMelech writes that he is “like an infant nursing from his mother.” Chazal explain this to mean that just like an infant doesn’t feel himself traveling when his mother travels, because he feels at peace in his mother’s arms, so did Dovid HaMelech feel stable and secure with Hashem, like a baby in its mother’s arms.

The Torah provides a person with stability to survive life’s troubles, but we need to actually connect ourselves to this stability. The fact that the Torah is stable doesn’t mean we are connected to it – we have to actually connect to it.

Only The Torah Will Give You Menuchah

If a person really wants a strong connection to the Torah, it’s not enough to sit and learn all day. That is also included in this, but to be connected to the Torah means that one has a very deep connection to the Torah, from the depths of his soul. A person needs to make a bris (covenant) with the Torah, to decide that he will be truly dedicated to it.

When it is clear to a person that that the only thing that enables the world to survive is the Torah, not just as an intellectual fact, but internalized in the heart, only then is it considered that a person is making a bris with the Torah. The moment a person makes a bris with the Torah, he forges a connection to it. Then he will have menuchah. From that moment on, a person will have a definite source of stability in his life. This will give him menuchah.

If a person hasn’t yet made a bris with the Torah, his own soul isn’t stable and he doesn’t have any inner peace.

This bris that a person has to make with the Torah doesn’t depend on if your friends know about it or not. It can be a private connection that you forge with the Torah. Every person has the choice to do this, and it is between him and his Creator. It is not a matter between a man and his friend. A person must decide: Am I connected to the Torah forever, or only some of the time?

A true connection to learning Torah gives a person menuchah. This menuchah is the greatest quality one can reach. Shabbos is essentially this menuchah; Chazal (Beraishis Rabbah 10:9) say, “When Shabbos comes, menuchah comes to the world.”

Many people want to have fun and look for all kinds of pleasure on this world. People are looking for something new that captures their senses that will add to their enjoyment in life. This is a terrible mistake. Shabbos, which is called menuchah, is also called oneg (pleasure). The true pleasure is found in menuchah, not in new things. If anyone has felt true menuchah even once in his life, and the sheer pleasure that is found in it, he is someone who is able to forge a commitment to learning the Torah and to find his menuchah in it.